It's not a horse
by paper-princess-94
Summary: Luffy finds a new source of adventure and Zoro has to deal with the extreme naivety of his captain.


**A/N **I'm not quite sure where this came from... but it only took about 2 hours or so to write (with about an hour of that being spent watching youtube videos and pretending I was doing something productive...) But anyway, I hope you enjoy it, it's just a bit of one piece silliness :P Sometimes I do wonder how the others put up with Luffy. Also, I think it's entirely possible that Luffy would do this, I believe he may be suffering from 'jack and the beanstalk' syndrome...

* * *

Zoro grumbled under his breath; was it really too much to ask to get just one afternoon of peace? They had docked just before midday, and with assurances that the log pose would be reset by morning the rest of the crew had left to explore, or shop, or do whatever the hell it was that they did when they weren't annoying the swordsman.

Zoro had put up a customary fight against being designated the watchman of the ship whilst everyone else was away, but really he had no problem with it. He had handed a short list of things he needed over to Franky, who had offered to pick some bits up for him, and had promptly fallen into a restful half-sleep leaning against the ship's mast.

And that had been his plan for the rest of the day; he honestly hadn't been expecting to see any of his crewmates until the cook returned to start dinner.

Sadly, he hadn't considered one factor in his carefully calculated plan, and that was the complete unpredictability of their very own rubber captain.

One eye opened groggily to glare at the teen who now stood in the centre of the swordsman's vision, blocking out the sunlight which had been warming his face until mere seconds ago. "What do you want, Luffy? Surely you're not done exploring the island already?" He would never admit to the slight hopeful twinge to his voice at the thought that the annoyance would only be temporary.

"I don't need to explore anymore, I've already found our next adventure." Luffy was grinning to himself and Zoro found himself dreading what the next words to come out of his mouth may be. "Come see!" The swordsman didn't get a choice as he found himself being forcibly dragged across the deck.

Luffy had obviously found a satisfactory position to unveil his newest adventure from because he unwrapped his arms from around Zoro and finally let him sit up.

Zoro quickly found himself wishing that he hadn't bothered.

"Luffy?"

"Yeah?"

"Why is there a horse on the ship?"

Luffy took a moment to consider then gave the answer which Zoro _should_ have already been expecting. "It's not a horse."

Zoro just dropped his head into his hands and sighed. "Yes, it is Luffy. It's a horse."

"No it's not." Luffy shook his head stubbornly.

"Well, what is it then, if it's not a horse?" Zoro, asked, once again dreading the answer. He was quickly coming to the conclusion that he should just stop asking Luffy questions all together.

"It's a unicorn," Luffy started, _just wait for it_ his brain muttered, "which was turned into a horse." _and there it is!_

Luffy was grinning to himself as though this whole situation made complete sense to him, which really raised the question of why they were all following this madman across one of the most dangerous sections of the world and regularly placing complete faith in his decisions as captain?

Zoro was stumped, so he just ignored every other question flying around in his head and instead settled for the one just begging to be asked.

"A unicorn?" He raised an eyebrow at the equally confused-looking horse which stood a couple of feet away, watching the two pirates warily.

"Yup!"

"But… It has no horn…"

"That's because it was _turned into_ a horse by an _eeeeevil_ witch. The guy who sold him to me told me so." And then it all snapped into place.

"How much did you pay for the, um, _unicorn_, Luffy?" Zoro asked slightly fearfully, not because he was afraid of what Luffy would say, or because he was even moderately worried about the crew financially. No, the reason for his fear was because he knew that once Nami heard the ridiculous sum of money their captain had just paid for a plain old i_horse_/i he was sure he wouldn't be able to catch a wink of sleep for days due to the inevitable screeching fit. It was a future he was not looking forward to, but one which he now realised was completely unavoidable.

The number his captain reeled off was impressive, Zoro wasn't aware that Nami had ever trusted Luffy with anything other than pocket change so he was baffled by how exactly he had managed to collect that sort of money together.

"So why exactly did you buy a unicorn that's not a unicorn?" Zoro was slowly working out what had happened, but he was still missing the reason for his captain's latest show of naivety.

"Because if we take the unicorn back to his family who live on the next island then they'll be able to fix him. And then they'll be sooooo happy that they'll throw us a big feast with lots of meat!" Luffy looked so sure excited that Zoro couldn't find it in his heart to break the truth to him. He'd leave it to Robin to inform Luffy that unicorn didn't _actually_ exist. She was better at breaking bad news than him anyway.

Luffy continued to babble on about how they would have a party with the unicorn family and then they'd all make friends and so on and so forth for about ten more minutes before getting bored and announcing that he was going to look for the others. He promptly launched himself off of the ship and into the streets of the port-town they were docked in.

Zoro then did something he never thought he'd do in his life; he shared a look of exasperation with a horse. The horse then lowered his head and began chewing at the grass on the lawn disinterestedly whilst Zoro found a comfortable place to resume his nap. He reckoned there wasn't much damage a horse could do without waking him up so he just left the creature to its business.

* * *

Zoro was awoken the second time by a swift kick to the side.

"What do you want?" He mumbled in the general direction of the cook, not even bothering to retaliate, it had been a poor effort on behalf of the blonde anyway.

"Oh, I don't know. Maybe I'd like to ask **Why there's a horse on the ship?**" Sanji's answer gained only a grunt as an answer before the swordsman turned over and promptly attempted to go back to sleep.

This earned him another kick, as well as an angry cook looming over him. "Oi, Marimo, I asked you a question!"

"'S not a horse…" Zoro mumbled sleepily.

Sanji tilted his head in confusion as he considered whether he should wait for chopper or just take their swordsman down to the loony bin himself. "What are you talking about, Idiot?"

"It's not a horse… It's a unicorn…" Sanji would have asked more questions but the green-haired idiot had already fallen asleep. Instead he just shook his head and made his way towards the kitchen, making a mental note to bring out an apple for the new equine member of their crew.


End file.
